Main menu

Post navigation

Copyright Abuse by Power Elites a BIG Reason to Oppose TPP

Want another reason to oppose the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement the U.S. administration and its corporate backers will soon try to ram down the throats of Congress? How about this one: any information or material posted on the internet could be removed, at least temporarily, if anyone (i.e. politician, corporate CEO, military official, etc.) claims the information or material has copyright over it.

From article below:

“In effect, ISPs are turned into “copyright cops” who are obliged to take down anything that anyone claims to have copyright over at any time, before any review of the material or its use takes place.

This means, for example, that governments can have politically embarrassing material or critical reports scrubbed from the web by merely claiming (even falsely) that the report reproduces “copyrighted” material like government documents or broadcasts of government committee hearings. Sound far-fetched? As the Electronic Frontiers Foundation has documented this is exactly how these types of laws have been used dozens of times, as when the Canadian Auditor General demanded the takedown of newspaper reports that published a section of a government report on immigration or DHS demanded the takedown of “conspiracy theory” videos on YouTube that were critical of the US government.

…

“These provisions serve no other purpose than to further stifle free speech, private property rights, and creative expression throughout the TPP area. If only someone had told the negotiators that intellectual property doesn’t exist.”